Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions. Brian Christian

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

      This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2016

      First published in the United States by Henry Holt and Company, LLC in 2016

      Copyright © 2016 by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths

      Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      Cover design by Jonathan Pelham

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780007547999

      Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780007547982

      Version: 2018-09-27

       Dedication

      For our families

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

       Algorithms to Live By

1 Optimal Stopping

       When to Stop Looking

2 Explore/Exploit

       The Latest vs. the Greatest

3 Sorting

       Making Order

4 Caching

       Forget About It

       5 Scheduling

       First Things First

       6 Bayes’s Rule

       Predicting the Future

       7 Overfitting

       When to Think Less

       8 Relaxation

       Let It Slide

       9 Randomness

       When to Leave It to Chance

       10 Networking

       How We Connect

       11 Game Theory

       The Minds of Others

       Conclusion

       Computational Kindness

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

       Acknowledgments

       Also by Brian Christian

       About the Authors

       About the Publisher

       Introduction

       Algorithms to Live By

      Imagine you’re searching for an apartment in San Francisco—arguably the most harrowing American city in which to do so. The booming tech sector and tight zoning laws limiting new construction have conspired to make the city just as expensive as New York, and by many accounts more competitive. New listings go up and come down within minutes, open houses are mobbed, and often the keys end up in the hands of whoever can physically foist a deposit check on the landlord first.

      Such a savage market leaves little room for the kind of fact-finding and deliberation that is theoretically supposed to characterize the doings of the rational consumer. Unlike, say, a mall patron or an online shopper, who can compare options before making a decision, the would-be San Franciscan has to decide instantly either way: you can take the apartment you are currently looking at, forsaking all others, or you can walk away, never to return.

      Let’s assume for a moment, for the sake of simplicity, that you care only about maximizing your chance of getting the very best apartment available. Your goal is reducing the twin, Scylla-and-Charybdis regrets of the “one that got away” and the “stone left unturned”